My throat crawled with the ominous tickle of an impending coughing fit as I crossed the perpendicular street and found myself walking through someone’s patchy front yard. The air tasted nasty, like something other than trees was being consumed by the fire. Something chemical or plastic. I coughed into my elbow and cleared my throat.
I didn’t see Victor’s truck or any other vehicles on the road. At the sidewalk, I slowed to the speed of someone walking a geriatric dog. My head spun like the fancy rims on Victor’s pickup: glancing back toward Lyla Bristol’s house, scouring ahead for the kids or Clint’s sedan, and lifting toward the magnetic horizon with its distant flashing lights and the slumbering forge glow of the sky.
I was both relieved and terrified—apparently those can exist simulta
